I have been watching the increasing disaster of AI interviews that have been making their rounds on social media lately. Some have been reported to glitch, like Max Headroom, the 1980s avatar acted out by a human. Glitching AI interviews are most likely rare, but even without glitches, they are being dispatched into the world to conduct interviews that can determine the livelihood and direction of a human’s life.
[Max Headroom, our 1980s preview of AI avatars]
AI has already been used for many years in hiring to comb through text-based resumes. People have had to make their resumes more palatable by catering to AI with tricks like stripping design elements, using the margins for keywords, and formulaic SEO.
AI interviewer tech has also existed for a few years already to coach candidates for the real thing with mock interviews. Thus, it was only a matter of time before AI Interviewers were implemented for actual candidate hiring, or, from the perspective of the company, to filter through candidates.
Yes, there are so many reasons to embrace AI, such as helping to navigate directions, translating languages, or making the world more sensory accessible. It is amazing to have the entire world in our palms, to know facts about the world and universe quickly. It is fantastic, yes, but it is not the only way, nor is it necessarily the best way.
The general goal of AI has been set to “reduce costs” (aka, pay less people and pay people less), and to make life “more convenient, easy, frictionless, fast” (for the company, not for us). Thus, AI interviews are presumably to screen as many applicants as possible while paying existing staff less to conduct those interviews. Moreover, maybe no one likes conducting interviews and maybe no one likes being interviewed.
Capitalist colonialism tells us if we do things faster we get more done, and then we can do more, earn more, be more busy. But that goal of “earn and be busy” is not necessarily aligned with living a full and revelatory life. Capitalist colonialism does not align with humanity.
The obvious progression is to have AI avatars loaded with our resumes that then interact with AI interviewers from companies that have loaded their company avatar with the requirements for a candidate.
If companies want to use AI interviewers, we certainly should be able to use AI avatars in response. This makes more sense than only the interviewer being AI. The limitation, however, is that many companies are springing AI interviewers on applicants without warning, there is no other interview option made available, and trained AI is unfortunately still more accessible in many ways to companies than to individuals.
The plot is lost, we get lost.
Companies must be upfront and transparent about their process and be ready to justify how that aligns with their values. In addition, AI interviewers are not yet at the point to offer a smooth enough experience to everyone. AI interviewers will have the same biases that we have been encountering in AI everywhere. They are trained in white cis het ableist capitalist culture and they will reflect that in their existence as AI.
Yes, we have learned how to be interviewed by humans and so, too, will we learn how to be interviewed by AI, but the AI interviewers need more training themselves for now.
We are at the point in the timeline of history where instead of humans acting as AI, it is AI is acting as humans.
We are the data farm. We are no longer being interviewed. Our data is being interviewed.
These avatars say so much about the values that AI has been associated with, and also has been built with. So far, we are witnessing what happens when AI is built with an AI-first mindset. Not people first, not air, water, and land first, not climate first, not life first. AI first. And when AI is created with an AI-first value system, then AI will be first, at the expense of everything and everyone else.
Do we want to be better humans? Do we want to be better AI? For us to move forward with AI in a meaningful way, we must ask ourselves, what are we trying to get to, and what are we wanting to accomplish?
I am fighting for a world where technology, old and new, can help us live more liberatory lives with each other.
So far, this isn’t it.
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